Nokia at Where 2012

Like last year, when we first introduced Nokia Maps 3D, Nokia is this year taking part in the annual Where Conference. Organized by O’Reilly and focused on the location business, this conference is gathering people from all over the world to exchange information about how to build apps, develop strategy and distribute location-aware products.
As we explained earlier, Nokia has a particular interest in supporting the Where Conference through our gold sponsorship, because we aim to be the “Where” company. While today’s internet is well organized around the “What” and the “Who” via search engines and social networks, we are striving to provide answers to the “Where.”

We recognize that there is an appetite for location-relevant information, which proves to us that the concept of hyper-local has never been more essential to people today. At the same time, people are buying, owning and using multiple mobile devices. And these devices are getting smarter – firstly, because they are increasingly connected to the cloud and secondly because they are sensor-rich.

From NFC for payment in stores and on transport, to more advanced sensors that interpret if you’re running as opposed to taking a bus, all the way to sensors that connect with devices like wrist band heart rate monitors. These sensor-rich devices provide us with a whole range of data that helps us better understand people’s behavior in order to identify patterns and trends.

Key to being able to provide this insight is the Nokia’s Where Platform, a learning engine fueled by two types of data: reference data and activity data.

Reference data is an index of the world around us and it enables routine location functions like search, routing and navigation. While activity data uses sensors to understand how people interact with their devices and apps.

Together, these two types of data power our Where Platform and enable us to create digital, predictive models from places and objects in the physical world and consumer’s activities.

This Where Platform offers compelling, market-leading functionality to customers via a set of APIs to help them quickly and easily create their own app experiences with location-based functionality.

Built on the world’s most accurate mapping and navigation assets (in over 190 countries, with over 50 languages), our location platform serves 24 million route requests daily, 147 million map tiles daily and over 1 billion search queries annually.

Because the Where Platform supports a wide set of operating systems and programming languages (including HTML5 for maximum reach), many customers including Yelp, Yahoo! and, more recently, Groupon are already using it to power their location-based apps and experiences.

If you are interested in understanding more about our vision for the location business and you are visiting the Where Conference, you can attend Gary Gale’s (Director of Places, Nokia Location&Commerce) session on Tuesday, April 3rd at 1:40pm in Yerba Buena Salon 10-11.

But there’s more! Nokia has its own booth (#208) at the Where Conference to show all our location based apps, from Nokia Maps to Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport. We’ll also be showcasing Nokia Pulse, which is currently in beta, our web offering at http://maps.nokia.com and the mobile web companion for iOS and Android devices at http://m.maps.nokia.com. You can meet experts who will be happy to answer all your questions.